15 December 2011

Karma & Relationships

In relationship, more accurately with intimate/committed relationship there is karmic compatibility. This means that both people have the same unresolved/unhealed/incomplete energy (not in every way of course – but in significant areas). It’s that pesky Law of Attraction again.

This ‘karmic’ energy usually manifests as a polarity, one person holds one end of the spectrum and the other person the opposite. In manifest behaviour/characteristics, it then looks very different – opposite in fact. The relationship then dances around the ‘appearance’ of this duality as the two people seek resolution within themselves. When one steps out of this dance and chooses to find healing within themselves and without the drama of the dance (assuming it hasn’t been possible to find it there) the other is gifted by this the opportunity to do the same – or not. If not, they will invariably attract someone else to do the dance with again in the same energy polarity.

The side of the polarity held may change. For example abandoner/abandoned, in a new relationship the abandoner may switch to the abandoned polarity. Of course both are always present and this is the point of it all to reconcile them within oneself and become whole. A little less abstractly let us look at how abandonment wounding polarizes in relationships.

To experience abandoning there also has to be an abandoner. One person will predominantly hold one or other of these polarities. The abandoner may have a pattern of consistently ending relationships, sometimes threatening it, or acting it out over and over again. Other behavioral patterns will also be present, formed by the layering of other wounds and scripts arising from denial of the core wound.

The fear behind abandoning is being abandoned, and abandoning is a survival strategy to avoid what is feared. I’ll abandon you before you have a chance to abandon me. As a survival strategy this avoids the experience of being abandoned, but it is probably felt anyway as one relationship after another falls apart. Victimhood being a central script of separation consciousness, the abandoners mind will probably create stories of being abandoned to deny the motivating feelings behind their own pattern.

The abandoned is terrified of being left and does everything they can to avoid triggering the abandoning. In the experience of being abandoned by the abandoner, they may go into a survival strategy of completely withdrawing and disconnecting, they simply disappear into themselves. This, in turn, is experienced as abandonment by the abandoner – the very thing they hoped to avoid. Or they may do whatever they feel will placate the abandoner, saying and doing things they do not feel.

It is easy to see how it is that the abandoner holds in themselves the denial of abandonment. How, though, does the abandoned hold the abandoner within them? The answer when I realized it, freed me from the victim-hood of abandonment.

We cannot be abandoned unless we have already abandoned ourselves.

I cannot be abandoned unless I have already abandoned myself. When you realize what this means, not with your mind, but in your being, then you too will not fear the feeling of abandonment, because you will stay with yourself and feel it. In time, with practice, feel it and hold yourself in love, until you know the truth that you have never been abandoned.

An added complexity to this is when there is ‘personal karma’ meaning that some significant part of the creation of this karmic energy was between the same two people in other lives. This makes the whole situation much more sticky. In such instances the karma makes the relationship sticky, meaning it’s hard to break out of even when dysfunctional. This can be because our soul wants the karma complete and will keep us in the fire to burn it off. Unfortunately we are not taught how any of this works and spend most of our energy resisting the process and perpetuating the polarity of the karma we hold in the relationship, and suffering.

When we are able to shift our understanding to see and accept this, we liberate ourselves from ever being a victim, and understand that from this wider soul perspective, we constantly serve each other to create the experiences that will facilitate our healing and evolution. In the end there is no blame, and these roles are undertaken from a deeper place of love and karma in relationship is a gift.